The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), a Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence housed at the University of Maryland, offers a course looking at the who, what and how of Terrorism Studies, by introducing students to cutting-edge research from the social and behavioral sciences and the experts investigating these topics.
The course will begin with a unit looking at widely held myths about terrorism and utilizing empirical data to discuss the realities of broad trends and patterns in terrorist attacks over time. The course will then review the psychological factors at play in individual radicalization and recruitment into terrorism, followed by an analysis of terrorist group dynamics. The course will next look at terrorist group operations, including their attacks and some of the supporting behaviors that allow them to carry out attacks, including use of media, financing, recruitment, and training. The course will conclude by looking at the factors that drive terrorist group persistence or endurance versus terrorist group desistance, and will bring the varied course concepts together through a detailed look at the case of Al-Qa’ida.
Throughout the course, students will have the opportunity to study and work with the University of Maryland’s Global Terrorism Database (GTD), the largest database of terrorist incidents in the world, learning its capabilities and developing basic skills in searching and displaying terrorism data.

Taught By

Dr. Gary LaFree

Director

Bill Braniff

Executive Director

Kate Izsak

Education Director

Joyce Rasing

Transcript

The Al-Qa'ida organization, gains centrality in the global jihadist landscape during the period of time known, as the anti-Soviet Jihad. In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, and remained there for about 10 years. Now following that time, there was a few years of civil war in Afghanistan where different warlords fought against one another in order to, trying to gain control of Afghanistan, as well, as the, the drug trade in Afghanistan. Al-Qa'ida was embedded in this violent story since about the mid 1980s. It was actually a precursor organization to Al-Qaeda known as, Maktab al-Khidamat or the MAK, the services bureau, was a logistics organization led by a Palestinian cleric named Abdullah Izam, and financed in large part by a wealthy Saudi young man named, Osama Bin Laden. The role of the Maktab al-Khidamat, was to help recruit foreign fighters, and bring them into the, anti-Soviet Jihad. They did this by reaching out in large part to already radicalized groups, and movements in other part of the Muslim world. So, I've mentioned that there have been lots of local Jihadist organizations that have tried to overthrow their own governments in history, and there have been other regional, groups that have tried to reclaim land that had been lost to the Muslim world. And Abdulla Azzam, this fellow sitting cleric, was very charismatic, and very effective at reaching out to these communities, and he had a specific recruitment edge that turned out to be quite effective, and really transformed the violent jihadist landscape. He leveraged an idea called classical or defensive Jihad, this is the idea, which I think everyone can understand, that if your community is attacked, it's your individual duty to fight back, and to defend your community members. So in the case of the Muslim community, if your Muslim community is attacked, it's the individual duty of every Muslim to fight back. Well, Abddulla Azzam extended this argument, to any Muslim community anywhere. This is based on the idea that, one's national identity is really secondary to one's religious identity. So, it doesn't matter if a, the Algerian state has attacked, the Afghan state has attacked. What matters is that the Muslim community has been attacked, and if that's the case, then it's the individual duty of every Muslim every where, to defend that Muslim community from the aggressor. So, this idea of maximalist interpretation of defensive Jihad resonated, and a huge number of foreign fighters were able to be recruited, and absorbed through the Maktab al-Khidamat guesthouses, trained in their training camp infrastructure, and then deployed onto the battlefield in Afghanistan. At the other end of this process, you have a group of veterans who have rubbed shoulders with one another, and shared some experiences, and stories. And so, after the end of this ten year process, Algerian Jihadists, might see something in common with all Egyptian Jihadists, who might see something in common with Pakistani Jihadists. The idea that their small local fight might actually be part of a much bigger fight, that perhaps there is this global conspiracy to oppress Muslims, and to prevent Islam from taking it's rightful place, and that their small fight was really a part of some larger fight. In 1988 the Al-Qa'ida organization was formally established, and it sought to capitalize on this networking, and the internationalization of Jihadism that had occurred, during the anti-Soviet Jihad. Many veterans left the anti-Soviet Jihad, and returned to their former groups. Many of them returned to the places that they came from, and started new groups. So one example of this is the Abu Sayyaf Group, and this is a Southeast Asian violent organization, but Abu Sayyaf, the individual for whom this group is named after, was an Afghan guerilla, and it shows you the kind of impact that this experience had on some of these foreign fighters. The Abu Sayyaf group, the leader of that group had so much respect for this Afghan guerilla that he named his organization after him, there's also the case of Lashkar-e-Taiba. This is an organization that was also inspired by Abdullah Azzam, like Al-Qa'ida, but at the end of the anti-Soviet Jihad, it was picked up by the Pakistani state, and used as a proxy militia to fight against Indian interests in Kashmir. So here you have an example of a group that maintains its own identity, it's actually repurposed by the Pakistani state. But there are a lot of fellow travelers, individuals who would have had the same formative experience during the anti-Soviet Jihad, as members of Al-Qa'ida. And then in a previous lecture we talked about the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, this is an Algerian terrorist organization. Many of their senior leaders fought in the anti-Soviet Jihad, and in 2006 when this group formally changed it's name to Al-Qa'ida Islamic Maghreb, it was larger because of inter-personal relationships, not just with Al-Qa'ida senior leadership, but with some of the senior leadership of what would become Al-Qa'ida in Iraq. And so, this very complex constellation of actors is created, and it actually can result in the re-naming, the re-branding of entire organizations, such as the selfless group for preaching combat into Al-Qa'ida, and Islamic Maghreb. So you have associated organizations, these fellow travelers, now you have some affiliated organizations, each of whom have their own unique relationship to Al-Qa'ida senior leadership. You have Al-Qa'ida Islamic Maghreb, you have Al-Qa'ida Arabian Peninsula, this is really a derivative group that, the chain of command really goes back to Al-Qa'ida senior leadership, and so this is a group that is very, very similar to Al-Qa'ida core. And then you have this other interesting case of Al-Qa'ida in Iraq, what we know as, Al-Qaeda in Iraq. This is the organization that fought against the occupation, US occupation in the mid 2000s, so notoriously. This group is actually a Jordanian terrorist group originally names, Tauhid wal Jihad, and it's leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was convinced by Al-Qa'ida to set up shop in Iraq, and re-orient it's violence against US occupation. If it was willing to do so, Al-Qa'ida would try to help finance it, and mobilize resources to support it, send it foreign fighters. So Al-Qa'ida in Iraq, is a good example of an Al-Qa'ida franchise that did didn't go the way Al-Qa'ida core would have liked. This a good example of what's called the principal agent problem, Al-Qa'ida, the principal had certain expectations for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the agent, but Zarqawi had his own ideas. Instead of merely targeting the occupying forces, Zarqawi also targeted other Sunni groups, religious minorities, the Shia, this is the majority Muslim sect in Iraq at the time. And this kind of sectarian violence or internecine violence, instead of targeting the occupiers, targeting other civilians created a backlash against Al-Qa'ida in Iraq as, well as Al-Qa'ida core. So this franchise model doesn't always work out, perfectly well for Al-Qa'ida but what it allowed them to do is, really create a more of a global footprint, it makes it appear that Al-Qa'ida is in Iraq. Al-Qa'ida is in North Africa, Al-Qa'ida is in the Indian subcontinent, Al-Qa'ida is in Yemen, etc. Now not everybody who leaves the Anti-Soviet Jihad can join a group, whether it's an associated, or affiliated group. Some of them can't go home, some of them have to go to places, perhaps Yemen, perhaps Spain, perhaps the United Kingdom, where they might not know many people. This network of veterans however, will serve to, in some cases, inspire the next generation. So you have individuals who are consuming violent propaganda online, and then they meet one of these veterans in their local community, and you can imagine the inspirational value that this sort of veterans would have. This is actually the case of Daniel Patrick Boyd, an American citizen, who fought in the Anti-Soviet Jihad, or at least, travelled to Afghanistan in the late 1980s, remained there for a few years, and then came back home, and reintegrated into society. It wasn't until the US occupied Afghanistan, after the events of 9/11 that Daniel Patrick Boyd mobilized a second time. But this time, he brought with him his sons, and some of their friends. Plotting to attack targets overseas, as well, as the Quantico Marine base in Virginia. So you see that Al-Qa'ida is at the center of what is really a much broader phenomenon right? And the threat comes from all these actors, associated groups, affiliated groups, veterans, as well, as a network of new inspired adherence, and they interact with one another in very complex ways. There's the case of Najibullah Zazi, this is a US citizen who is inspired to go defend Afghans from US occupation so, he goes to join the Taliban. But, when he gets there he meets members from Al-Qa'ida's external operations cell. They provide him with a month of training in an Al-Qa'ida training camp, and send him back home. In an attempt to conduct an attack on, or about the anniversary of 9/11 involving high explosives, suicide bombing attacks on the New York City metro subway system. And so you see that individuals sort of move through this violent, landscape in predictable ways, and Al-Qa'ida is not always at the center, of all of these plots, but they've put themselves at the center of this broader violent landscape. This has resulted in an escalation of violence, in a few different ways. One, we've seen more and new different violent conflicts arise in different places around the world, so we've seen Al-Qa'ida like groups spring up in many different regions. Two, we know from the work of Victor Asal, and Karl Rethemeyer, and specifically their work on the big allied, and dangerous data set, that groups that have a lot of collaborative relationships, tend to be more lethal, because they have greater access to human capital, better access to knowledge, better access to resources. But in addition to that, organizations that have rivalries also tend to show an increase in lethality over time, and this is because of the idea outfitting that we talked about earlier in the course. The idea that each group is trying to compete with one another, for leadership, for power in the militant landscape, I think this is really important when you look at the constellation of Global Jihadist groups. Because what we're seeing right now with the Islamic state of Iraq and the Levant, is a good example of how what was an ally, Al-Qa'ida and Iraq, can become a rival, and during this process, result in huge increases in the amount of violence that these organizations are perpetrating. The Islamic state in Iraq, and the Levant is Al-Qa'ida in Iraq. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed, and successive leaders took his place but continued on the same kind of strategy that ISIL now exhibits. Specifically, it's a strategy of escalation, of attacking local targets, and creating a lot of civilian casualties in order to destabilize entire regimes, this is a very different strategy than Al-Qa'ida's war of attrition. Al-Qaeda is trying to convince people to target the far enemy, that Western Embassy, that Western tourist company. Whereas, ISIL is trying to destabilize entire regimes through escalatory violence. The concern is that Al-Qa'ida is going to need to respond, if they're going to remain a leader in the Global Jihadist movement, they're going to have to figure out, how to regain prominence in the world stage. They're likely going to seek to attack foreign enemy targets, perhaps with more extreme tactics, in order to remain relevant, and this kind of escalation, or this kind of competition, bodes very poorly for all the different regions in which Al-Qa'ida currently operates. And unfortunately, that is quite a large swap now of, of north Africa, West Africa, the horn of Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. In sum, what we have discussed here is the idea that Al-Qa'ida has been a central player historically, and conceptually in the Global Jihadist movement, but currently there are many different ways to get involved in this movement. All right, there are organizations that may open doors for you in different geographic areas. There are organizations that may capitalize on different bits of ideology, or different bits of political grievance. Which are appealing to different individuals or different communities, and so the landscape has really become much more complex, much more diversified, and this creates challenges for the counter-terrorism community. It creates challenges for an organization like Al-Qa;ida that's trying to steer this movement in a certain direction. If individuals are more drawn to inspire magazines do it yourself Jihad, We can expect one kind of violent output, if individuals instead are move inspired by Al-Qa'idas complex suicide attacks against symbolic targets violence may go in yet a different direction. If the Islamic State of Iraq, and Levant however is able to convince people that sectarian violence, is really the most important front right now in the Global Jihadist landscape. We'll continue to see large numbers of foreign fighters flow into Iraq, and Syria to participate in that kind of violent Jihadism. At the end of the day, Al-Qa'ida has been central in creating this landscape, but the landscape is much bigger than Al-Qa'ida. In a counter-terrorism community has to appreciate all of it's different facets, and contexts, if it is to create appropriate policy, and practical responses.

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